4 advantages of automating employee benefits

Wed 1 May 2019

Others

HR began as a department that solely took care of recruitment and wages, but over the years, it has evolved into something more, a vertical that focuses on reaching strategic goals by maximising the potential of its employees.
Just as how verticals like marketing and operations have become more digital over the years, HR tasks are also evolving to suit the digital age. Over time, solutions have emerged that can digitize and/or automate various HR tasks.

Below are the 4 main advantages of digitizing HR activities

1. Ease of use

Without a platform, there will be a lot of documentation, and back & forth changes that are time consuming, difficult to track and very difficult to reconcile. Having to rely on multiple emails and excel to perform standard HR tasks is time consuming, and holds back HR from focusing on add true value to the organization.
HR platforms allow for ease of use, and enable performing organisation wide tasks easily. Employee onboarding becomes simple, as platforms allow employee to provide bank account, PAN and aadhar(for payroll, tax, PF) and dependant details( for insurance) in one simple interface. Leaves, attendance, expense reimbursements also become streamlined, and can be done smoothly.
Having leaves and attendance in one place makes filing leave requests, approving them, regularizing attendance etc completely seamless task that does not require HR intervention in most scenarios.
Insurance benefits can also be streamlined by automating addition, deletion and premium contribution processes. You needn’t onboard the same employee into multiple locations, its simpler to just have one system that connects everything so that employee benefits are smooth and hassle free.
Cumbersome processes to avail simple benefits are one of the main causes of employee frustration, and a platform for HR can help you avoid it.

2. Accuracy

When it comes to tax, payroll, loss of pay calculations, and reimbursements, it is important to have accurate calculations that can account for any number of scenarios. Income tax has a complicated structure, and is often changed every year.
Companies have expense reimbursement policies with limits and strict approvals, which need to be followed correctly. Employee leaves and attendance also needs to be factored in to calculate if he/she will incur loss of pay. There are also calculations like Employee State Insurance, Provident Fund, Professional tax, and Group insurance premiums(especially if employees bear a share of the cost), that need to be calculated taking a lot of factors into account.

Getting these calculations wrong will cause problems to employees, as well as problems to the organisation, as it could result in over spending or compliance violations. A system that does the calculation dynamically will help ensure there are no mistakes, and ensures that everyone is happy.

3. Storage and security

A by-product of having employee onboarding and other processes offline is that a lot of documents pile up, and companies require storage space for these documents. It also makes them less secure, more vulnerable to damage, and very difficult to manage as an organisation grows.
Hr also has access to a lot of sensitive information that needs to be kept confidential. There are also strict roles and chain of command to be followed. Having all employee information in a physical forms makes any kind of processing a hassle.
Having a HR platform digitises all the documents and information, and secure encryptions ensure data stays safe. HR platforms can also create user level access controls, so only the employees with the requisite authority can view or edit information such as salaries, and reporting structures. Having user control also allows for efficient delegation without confusion or conflicts.

4. Distribution

HR is responsible for the well-being and general functioning of the entire organisation ,and because of this they have to have an efficient avenue to reach out to all employees. Emails alone are generally not enough, because HR often needs information from employees, and email make it hard to collate and sort the information out.
For example, every employee will have some sort of declaration to make on his/her taxes and that information needs to be collated and available to payroll. Similarly, leave requests and attendance details also need to be collected efficiently. There is also KYC details, such as PAN and Aadhar needed for tax and provident fund, as well as dependant name, relationship and date of birth for insurance purposes. Collecting this information takes time and is often not readily available. Having a platform where employees can input it, a platform which can remind employees to fill up their data by the deadline, eases the pressure on HR and also makes it hassle free for the employees.
This ability of a platform to unify the workforce’s data is also useful for performance appraisals, contests, expense reimbursements, etc.

There are many advantages to using a software or platform for your HR, and these are just some of them. Watch this space for more content about how much more Emplify can do for HR, and tell us if we missed out on any major benefits of automation! To get an idea of how much value a platfomr can add to your business, contact us for a free trial or a demo!